Summary of Book Third
It is more difficult to characterize the English Poetry of the Eighteenth century than that of any other. For it was an age not only of spontaneous transition, but of bold experiment: it includes not only such absolute contrasts as distinguish the 'Rape of the Lock' from the 'Parish Register,' but such vast contemporaneous differences as lie between Pope and Collins, Burns and Cowper. Yet we may clearly trace three leading moods or tendencies:—the aspects of courtly or educated life represented by Pope and carried to exhaustion by his followers; the poetry of Nature and of Man, viewed through a cultivated, and at the same time an impassioned frame of mind by Collins and Gray:—lastly, the study of vivid and simple narrative, including natural description, begun by Gay and Thomson, pursued by Burns and others in the north, and established in England by Goldsmith, Percy, Crabbe, and Cowper. Great varieties in style accompanied these diversities in aim: poets could not always distinguish the manner suitable for subjects so far apart: and the union of conventional and of common language, exhibited most conspicuously by Burns, has given a tone to the poetry of that century which is better explained by reference to its historical origin than by naming it artificial. There is, again, a nobleness of thought, a courageous aim at high and, in a strict sense manly, excellence in many of the writers:—nor can that period be justly termed tame and wanting in originality, which produced poems such as Pope's Satires, Gray's Odes and Elegy, the ballads of Gay and Carey, the songs of Burns and Cowper. In truth Poetry at this, as at all times, was a more or less unconscious mirror of the genius of the age: and the many complex causes which made the Eighteenth century the turning-time in modern European civilization are also more or less reflected in its verse. An intelligent reader will find the influence of Newton as markedly in the poems of Pope, as of Elizabeth in the plays of Shakespeare. On this great subject, however, these indications must here be sufficient.
page no.
[134] 153 We have no poet more marked by rapture, by the ecstasy which Plato held the note of genuine inspiration, than Collins. Yet but twice or thrice do his lyrics reach that simplicity, that sinceram sermonis Attici gratiam to which this ode testifies his enthusiastic devotion. His style, as his friend Dr. Johnson truly remarks, was obscure; his diction often harsh and unskilfully laboured; he struggles nobly against the narrow, artificial manner of his age, but his too scanty years did not allow him to reach perfect mastery. St. 3 Hybla: near Syracuse. Her whose ... woe: the nightingale, 'for which Sophocles seems to have entertained a peculiar fondness'; Collins here refers to the famous chorus in the Oedipus at Colonus. St. 4 Cephisus: the stream encircling Athens on the north and west, passing Colonus. St. 6 stay'd to sing: stayed her song when Imperial tyranny was established at Rome. St. 7 refers to the Italian amourist poetry of the Renaissance: In Collins' day, Dante was almost unknown in England. St. 8 meeting soul: which moves sympathetically towards Simplicity as she comes to inspire the poet. St. 9 Of these: Taste and Genius.
The Bard. In 1757, when this splendid ode was completed, so very little had been printed, whether in Wales or in England, in regard to Welsh poetry, that it is hard to discover whence Gray drew his Cymric allusions. The fabled massacre of the Bards (shown to be wholly groundless in Stephens' Literature of the Kymry) appears first in the family history of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir (cir. 1600), not published till 1773; but the story seems to have passed in MS. to Carte's History, whence it may have been taken by Gray. The references to high-born Hoel and soft Llewellyn; to Cadwallo and Urien; may, similarly, have been derived from the 'Specimens' of early Welsh poetry, by the Rev. E. Evans:—as, although not published till 1764, the MS., we learn from a letter to Dr. Wharton, was in Gray's hands by July 1760, and may have reached him by 1757. It is, however, doubtful whether Gray (of whose acquaintance with Welsh we have no evidence) must not have been also aided by some Welsh scholar. He is one of the poets least likely to scatter epithets at random: 'soft' or gentle is the epithet emphatically and specially given to Llewelyn in contemporary Welsh poetry, and is hence here used with particular propriety. Yet, without such assistance as we have suggested, Gray could hardly have selected the epithet, although applied to the King (p. 141-3) among a crowd of others, in Llygad Gwr's Ode, printed by Evans.—After lamenting his comrades (st. 2, 3) the Bard prophesies the fate of Edward II, and the conquests of Edward III (4): his death and that of the Black Prince (5): of Richard II, with the wars of York and Lancaster, the murder of Henry VI (the meek usurper), and of Edward V and his brother (6). He turns to the glory and prosperity following the accession of the Tudors (7), through Elizabeth's reign (8): and concludes with a vision of the poetry of Shakespeare and Milton.
[140] 159 l. 13 Glo'ster: Gilbert de Clare, son-in-law to Edward. Mortimer, one of the Lords Marchers of Wales.
[141] 159 High-born Hoel, soft Llewellyn (l. 15); the Dissertatio de Bardis of Evans names the first as son to the King Owain Gwynedd: Llewelyn, last King of North Wales, was murdered 1282. L. 16 Cadwallo: Cadwallon (died 631) and Urien Rheged (early kings of Gwynedd and Cumbria respectively) are mentioned by Evans (p. 78) as bards none of whose poetry is extant. L. 20 Modred: Evans supplies no data for this name, which Gray (it has been supposed) uses for Merlin (Myrddin Wyllt), held prophet as well as poet.—The Italicized lines mark where the Bard's song is joined by that of his predecessors departed. L. 22 Arvon: the shores of Carnarvonshire opposite Anglesey. Whether intentionally or through ignorance of the real dates, Gray here seems to represent the Bard as speaking of these poets, all of earlier days, Llewelyn excepted, as his own contemporaries at the close of the thirteenth century.
Gray, whose penetrating and powerful genius rendered him in many ways an initiator in advance of his age, is probably the first of our poets who made some acquaintance with the rich and admirable poetry in which Wales from the Sixth Century has been fertile,—before and since his time so barbarously neglected, not in England only. Hence it has been thought worth while here to enter into a little detail upon his Cymric allusions.